Shocker at the vmas

At least the shocker this year was related to music.

The MTV Video Music Awards are always wilfully chaotic, keeping alive the myth of pop as the provenance of rebels by placing a bunch of moderately edgy celebrities within a festive environment and fuelling the mood with sexy performances, off-colour jokes and "incidents" that are often staged but good for a thousand Twitter tweets. One of these mostly bogus controversies usually goes a bit deeper, hinting at real issues of identity, status, personal power and self-expression - the sticky stuff from which pop music is, in fact, made.

When Kanye West jumped up during Taylor Swift's acceptance speech for Best Female Video, put his hand over her microphone and declared that Beyoncé's losing Single Ladies clip was "one of the best videos of all time," he did a stupid thing.

He seemed like a bully inexplicably targeting an honours student, and he further damaged his rather unstable reputation without managing to make his point clear.

A couple of hours later, Beyoncé received the Moonman trophy MTV's execs had designated for her - every superstar gets one, apparently, in this predetermined coronation of pop's latest prom court of ingenues and enduring hotties. Ever the lady, she ceded her thank-you time to Swift, who emerged seeming quite prepared for the moment and gave a totally inconsequential speech. (She's really grateful to her video director and her fans.) It was a nice gesture of female solidarity in the face of West's boorish and, yes, macho move.

Superstar Wars

But let's consider what might have motivated West's outburst. Swift was the best-selling artist of 2008, according to Nielsen Soundscan.

She's transcended her base in country music to become a Top-40 juggernaut and, arguably, the current face of young female America. Beyoncé is a slightly older superstar who's also topped plenty of sales list; like Swift, she makes chart-toppers strongly rooted in a specific genre that appeal to a wider audience. Her home base is R&B, and, through her marriage to Jay Z and her own rhythmically brilliant singing style, she's strongly connected to hip hop.

Perhaps West, who later apologised, felt that Swift's little love story mirroring the current plot of the new prime-time hit Glee genuinely wasn't as deserving as Beyoncé's Bob Fosse-inspired volcanic eruption of a dance routine, which has inspired thousands of tributes by fans, including Justin Timberlake and Barack Obama.

Maybe he was miffed that this young black pop queen's heels were being nipped at by a blond Ivory Girl whose fans tend to look quite a bit like her.

Beyoncé and Swift, quick to join hands and squelch any rumours of a feud, stood up for pop as a crossover art in which artists of all kinds can celebrate each other, but the tensions hinted at in this silly conflict are real, and relevant within America right now.

In contrast, the predetermined Big Stories at the VMA's felt fairly anticlimactic. Madonna's clearly heartfelt opening eulogy for Michael Jackson will surely become a new highlight on her reel, but it didn't take the public conversation about him anywhere new - critical and public reactions to his passing have already redeemed him as a genius and a pop king.

His sister Janet's appearance during a video-centric dance tribute fascinated; mimicking her lost sibling's dance moves as he performed them in the Scream video, she openly presented herself as his spiritual twin, the one who tried to carry on his work when his life made it impossible for him to do so. In the end, though, it was simply dazzling choreography, more ritual than spontaneous.